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At the same time, Augustus prepared to make Caius and Lucius his two future collaborators in place of Tiberius; Ovid set his hand to a book still more scandalous and subversive than the Amores, the Ars Amandi; public indulgence covered with its protection all those accused on grounds of the laws of the year 18; and finally, the two boys, Caius and Lucius, became popular, like great personages, all over Italy.
He had the good luck to be a friend of Caligula before the death of Tiberius. When he ascended the throne of the Roman world, he took his friend from prison and disgrace, and gave him a royal title and part of the dominions of his ancestors. On the death of the Roman tyrant, he received from his successor Claudius the investiture of all the dominions which belonged to Herod the Great.
Now earnest were the expectations of all men, "how great would prove the fidelity of the friends of Germanicus; what the assurance of the criminal, what the behaviour of Tiberius; whether he would sufficiently smother, or betray his sentiments."
On one occasion, when Æmilius Rectus sent home from Egypt a larger amount of taxes than was usual, he hoped that his zeal would be praised by Tiberius. But the emperor's message to the prefect was as stern as it was humane: "I should wish my sheep to be sheared, but not to be flayed."
But Tiberius loved Drusus with his whole heart; his thoughts knew no color of jealousy; unusual harmony was between them until Drusus died. The world said Augustus disliked the boy: we shall see on what appearances that opinion was based.
Livia, it is true, is your confederate; Tiberius is your friend; but both secretly: and indeed none will more pompously bewail the violent fate of Germanicus, than such as for it do most sincerely rejoice."
Only the Nero of the last part of the Annals, or the Tiberius of the first six books of that work, can properly stand forth, in his persecuting spirit, as the counterpart of the Dominican, John de Torquemada, who, in the performance of his duty, as the Inquisitor General in Spain, proceeded against upwards of 100,000 persons, 6,000 of whom he condemned to the flames.
Then came Tiberius Alexander as successor to Fadus; he was the son of Alexander the alabarch of Alexandria, which Alexander was a principal person among all his contemporaries, both for his family and wealth: he was also more eminent for his piety than this his son Alexander, for he did not continue in the religion of his country.
Further advantages might have been gained; but the prospect of the succession drew Maurice to Constantinople, where Tiberius, stricken with a mortal disease, received him with open arms, gave his daughter and the state into his care, and, dying soon after, left him the legacy of the empire, which he administered with success for above twenty years.
We feel tolerably secure in assigning this fine building to the early years of the Emperor Tiberius, and in naming the Emperor’s mother, Livia, as the divinity to whom it was dedicated.
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